Before the Pirates took the field on July 31st, 1992, they were tied for first place in the National League East with the Montreal Expos. Without Bobby Bonilla, it was a mild surprise the Pirates had made it back to the top of the standings. That night, the Pirates sent a 25-year old former first baseman out to the mound for his first big league start. Tim Wakefield pitched a complete game that night, striking out ten, walking five, chucking 146 pitches at the baffled St. Louis Cardinals, and leading the Pirates to a 3-2 win.
Wakefield started 13 times for the Pirates down the stretch; he went 8-1 with a 2.15 ERA and the Pirates were 9-4 in his starts. After Wakefield’s call-up, the Pirates never fell out of first place and they ended up winning the East by nine games. In the 1992 NLCS, Wakefield tossed two complete game victories and many assumed that he was going to be the series MVP until Doug Drabek, Stan Belinda, and Jim Leyland’s ninth inning meltdown in Game 7. Wakefield was up in the bullpen.
It’s maybe only now, nearly 20 years later, that I can really appreciate how magical what happened with Wakefield in 1992 really was. On a team loaded with stars in or entering their primes, it was a failed first baseman that taught himself a knuckleball just to stay in baseball that put them over the top and it was nearly willed them into the World Series himself. When I was a kid, that seemed like the kind of thing that just happened to the Pirates. I know better now.
My specific Tim Wakefield memory is a little different, though. I remember his first start after the 1992 NLCS, which came on Opening Day 1993. I was still a year away from being allowed to attend Opening Day with my dad and my uncle (I dunno why, to be honest, maybe because I would’ve had to miss school), but I remember follwing the game that afternoon, waiting for my dad to get home to talk about it. The Pirates won 9-4 behind what I can see now was a ridiculous performance from Wakefield (nine strikeouts and nine walks in seven innings). I knew everyone expected the Pirates to be bad in 1993 and I knew why, but with Wakefield pitching and a win on Opening Day? I thought everything would be OK.
But Wakefield struggled in 1993 and was awful in Triple-A in ’94 and the Pirates released him just before the truncated 1995 season began. He moved on to Boston where he stayed for 17 years. He found his knuckleball again, he worked as a closer for a while, he managed to lose an ALCS almost as heartbreaking as the 1992 NLCS was*, and then he finally broke through for an incredible ALCS win in 2004 and two World Series titles in ’04 and ’07. When the Sox won that World Series in 2004, I was as happy for him as I have been for any non-Pirate to win a World Series. He had an amazing career, and he’ll be part of Red Sox and Yankee lore forever. That’s a heck of a career for a guy that washed out of the minors once and didn’t even make his debut until 25.
Congrats on a great career, Tim Wakefield. Maybe someday, the Pirates will be back to where you took them in 1992.
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